I was inspired by Andartar's test galaxy and I thought I would play around with a star chart. Anyone with Gimp savvy point me to a tut that can help me create a circular grid? Anyways, this is what I got so far:

Solli, also looking for pointers

jaspertjie

12-17-2009, 08:56 AM

Hmmm... quite interesting, but you should use less dust and more stars.

wormspeaker

12-17-2009, 12:17 PM

It's not bad for a first shot. It's a bit too uniform though it probably needs to be more broken up. Also the stars around and throughout the galaxy should either be mostly confined to the circular disk of the galaxy or otherwise must represent a star field between the observer and the galaxy. If the stars are actually part of the observer's galaxy (such as for all galaxy photos we see here on Earth) then you should use more than just blue stars. Red, Orange, Yellow, and White would also be individually distinguishable. (and there are far more visible Yellow and White stars than Blue.) If the stars are part of the galaxy being viewed then they should be more like crystal hard pinpoints rather than blurry masses and they should be for the most part contained within the disk of the galaxy.

drow

12-17-2009, 12:36 PM

wormspeaker; you're neglecting a third class of objects, other galaxies in the background.

wormspeaker

12-18-2009, 11:42 AM

I suppose that's true. On the other hand, at this close a range to the target galaxy if you were going to see that number of other galaxies in the background at that density they would probably be very distant galaxies and thus would be red-shifted as seen in the images here.

Andartar

12-20-2009, 01:10 PM

Great to see someone else tackle galaxy mapping :)
As I found out while doing my galaxy map, the tutorial doesn't yield satisfactory results when you compare it to real galaxies. My tip is to use the spiral shape and then butcher the whole thing, adding clouds and stars.

I made my grid with Inkscape, which is a free vector program. In fact I used Inkscape for all the infoboxes, linework and text.

Ronson2k10

01-14-2010, 08:02 AM

You also have to keep in mind that space unlike a surface has no top of bottom. So the map would perhaps be in 3D. In a galaxy the 'Dust' you see is actually stars. Each one of which could contain a system of planets and so on. So in a map you are perhaps trying to show navigation between the stars.

I would perhaps reduce to nearly invisible the 'dust' cloud as that is only to show the scope of the map (it's boundry). With in the map itself you have the stars that make up the galaxy. As it's a spiral galaxy you have there is something called the ecliptic which is the position above or below your suns will be as they orbit the center. If you think of your galaxy as a pizza (anchovy galaxy - kidding). The stars could be on the crust but could also be above or below the crust as well. Their orbits around the center may not be eclipitcal but such orbits take millions of years so their current position is rather stationary when it comes to your map.

As such though systems could be in the ecliptic but above or below each other as well as separate from each other. So you may want to include the systems inclination as well as in it's position.

I myself am interested in making a similar map. I like to illustrate locations for my science fiction writing. I wish you best of luck with yours